Is Radio Even Still A Thing?

 

Okay, first of all, Happy New Year.  2023, baby.

 

Who’da thunk it?

 

This year, having learned my lesson from 2022, I tried to wait until early morning of New Year's Day to post this, so as not to have it accidentally count as a "last year" post again.  But then came family dinner, which took up the entire day (plus the Nuzlocke I was doing).  So that explains why you are getting this fresh new content on January 2nd.

 

But at least it does count towards 2023.

 

And now on to your scheduled first manga blog post of the year.  Two for two.

 

Now, Masaaki Nakayama hasn’t exactly written a ton of manga, but boy-do those few he has written stay with you!

 

I could liken his work to that of Junji Ito, in a way.  Many creatures, human (oid) and otherwise wind up being distorted to an unnerving effect in both Nakayama’s and Ito’s works.  And very few things from either of their manga ever really get a concrete and satisfying explanation.  But, for better or for worse, Nakayama apparently doesn’t share Ito’s medical background, which allows him to really give us the creepily-realistic details that he does.

 

Not that that’s a bad thing, mind you.  Such lack of fine detail can often add to the unnatural-ness of whatever we’re seeing.

 

Nakayama also operates on a dark variation of the “Japanese humor” that I’ve talked so much about before on this blog; Rather than having someone do something goofy out of nowhere during a serious scene to break the tension (or vice-versa), Nakayama often has something horrifying or just plain weird and out-of-place appear out of nowhere in order to create horror.

 

It’s almost like the manga equivalent of a Jump Scare-again, like Ito, in that Ito often leaves the horrific images that his stories are always building up to on opposite pages, so that it’s up to the reader to turn the page of their own will and willingly invite the horrific image into their eyes and brains.

 

I think I might have seen some pictures from [Nakayama’s] earlier work Fuan No Tane (Seeds of Anxiety) online before, but I think PTSD Radio is/was the first manga of his that I’ve actually picked up and read.

 

Going by the tropes page for Fuan No Tane, said book was basically a collection of occasionally-related nonsensical ghost stories with little to no explanations and a ton of creepy shock value.

 

PTSD Radio is only mildly better in that regard.

 

We cut between POVs so fast that this reader was practically given whiplash, but there are a few loose threads that seem to tie together.

 

Chifuyu and Keita used to date, until a supernatural hair-pulling thing started to place a strain on their relationship.  Elsewhere and elsewhen, a little girl that we can assume to be a young Chifuyu is forced to have her head shaved by the traditions of her small rural village.  Her late mother also has her head shaved when she passes, which the village elders attribute to the appeasement of their god, Ogushi-sama.  In his name, people’s heads are shaved upon death (and apparently at other points in their lives) and their hair offered up in sealed boxes covered with talismans.

 

There are also crows that are connected to Ogushi-sama, as well.

 

The horror in these tales comes not only from the hideously distorted features and the seemingly random cosmic horror-like world that the characters live in, but also, as in his previous work, from the fear of being watched by or followed by something that you cannot see or understand.

 

So, naturally, in addition to the hair motif, there is also a serious eye motif going on throughout the work.  Eyes for watching, you see.  Eyes where they shouldn’t be, eyes NOT being where they should be, too many eyes, etc.

 

Each chapter is only a few pages long, which also does not help with overall story cohesion.  The book that I picked up from my local library was an omnibus containing Volumes 1 and 2 out of the 4 that there are, so one can hope for a concrete ending that ties everything all together, but I personally would not hold my breath.

 

If I happened to see the next and final volume omnibus available on my library shelves, I might pick it up just for the sake of trying to figure out what the heck is going on, but that’s it.  One can only stare at unsettling images for so long before you either get so creeped out by them that you never want to see them again, or else you get used to them and they lose their power.

 

But this is still only the first post of the new year, so, with luck, the next 8 series that I intend to review for this blog in 2023 will be of higher storytelling quality.